Don’t get me wrong, Tokyo Game Show is great and I’m well-aware of how lucky I am to be here, but the news that Final Fantasy XV was not going to be here really stung. I don’t think it was too much to ask either. Every Japanese person with a PS4 and a copy of Final Fantasy Type-0 got to play a demo earlier this year, would it really have been so difficult to just pack into a van and bring it over? The disappointment was real. Thankfully, Ace Attorney 6 is also real, and present and playable at Capcom’s booth.
I am a total nutcase for the Ace Attorney games, as most people who are into them probably are because the games are totally nuts. In keeping with the spirit of a franchise where courtroom drama sits alongside supernatural mystery and slapstick humor, Ace Attorney 6 was playable in an actual full scale replica of an Ace Attorney courtroom. My excitement to get my hands on this game, coupled with my excitement to play it in this actual courtroom (oh my god) completely got the better of me and I didn’t even care that the game would inevitably be completely in Japanese. Maybe I should have.
We don’t really know very much about Ace Attorney 6, and I’m sorry to say that my elementary level Japanese let me down big time and after playing it myself I don’t really feel like I know it any better. We know that it takes place in a foreign country, apparently based somewhat in Thailand going by the visuals, and we know that the law works differently than Phoenix is used to there. We also know, as of today, that Apollo Justice will be returning, thanks to this trailer.
Gameplay-wise the demo played out similarly to 2012’s Dual Destinies and save for the aforementioned location change and some improved 3D, the presentation and visuals are largely the same. I was presented with a crime, then brought to the courtroom to view the evidence and listen to witness testimony. The witness, a young boy named Pocket, clearly knew more about the murder than he was letting on. Unfortunately, he also knew more about it than I could ever hope to, and faced with wall after wall of relentless kanji, I found myself paying more attention to the new courtroom decor than anything else.
The Thai influence is a welcome change; both the judge and resident tutorial-bad-guy Payne look hilarious in their new garb, and the courtroom takes advantage of the 3D with some nice decor. There’s also the mysterious addition of ‘Spirit Vision’ a technique that looks a lot like Apollo Justice’s twitch-finding ability, but unfortunately my demo ended before I got to see it in action myself. It looked impressive from over the shoulder of the woman next to me, if that means anything to you.
The Ace Attorney games caught me completely off guard when I discovered them in 2007 and every one of them has managed to surprise me in ways I wasn’t expecting. Ace Attorney 6 feels like an interesting progression on Dual Destinies, without straying too far from what made it so much fun, and I for one won’t have any objections to that.
